Day 9: Wednesday, Sept 01, 2004: Doors, doors, and doors

My boss's boss, Mike Tso, suggested that perhaps the dry cleaners give
you a date later than they expect your clothes to be done.  So, if
they are a bit late, they don't have to break a promise to a customer.
So, I visit the cleaners across the street.  I pick up three of my
shirts, which were ready for pickup on 8/31.  However, the lady
insists that the rest won't be ready until after 5pm today.  Oh well.
I tried.

I met Rob Atendido for lunch in Monzen-nakacho today.  The last time I
saw him was not quite two weeks ago, at The Black Forest restaurant in
Minneapolis.  He stayed overnight near the Narita Airport to avoid a
mad, same-day rush to the Haneda Airport to fly to his new job & home.
Monzen-nakacho is, conveniently enough, in between the two airports.

We went to the Taiwanese place, Yatai.  It's near the subway station,
it has yummy food, *and* I knew that there would be plenty of room for
Rob to stash his suitcase while we ate.  He helped translate parts of
the menu, so I got to order something without pictures.  (Speaking of
pictures, I forgot to take one of Yatai's interior.  Oh well.)  I got
a beef dish with onions & green peppers in a black pepper sauce.  A
*lot* of black pepper: nose starting to drip after 3 mouthfuls amount
of black pepper.  Extremely tasty.

Rob took longer than expected to get here, so the end of lunch was
later than anticipated.  I hopped on the subway to get to the Data
Center.  Gazing at the signs inside the car, I realized that the "keep
out of the doors' way" sign was different: a crab with pincers rather
than the cat with tail.  So I pulled out my camera and, just as I
snapped the photo ... I realized that I was going through
Minami-sunamachi station without stopping.  Oops.  I was sitting on an
express train.

I looked very carefully at the platform sign, and it definitely did
not say the magic "Rapid" word for this train.  Nonetheless, I watched
a few other stations whizz by before finally coming to a stop at
Urayasu.  I trudge under the rails and pop up on the platform on the
other side.  From now on, I will only bother looking at the schedule
to determine which trains are rapid/express trains.  Oh well.  Lee-san
was kind enough to shepherd me through Hitachi's building security
without scolding me about being so late.

The data center was very quiet on Wednesday.  All the Gemini KK folks
agreed that my term in Japan was much less stressful than recent
visits by Gary & Jim.  Wednesday seemed even quieter yet: a few less
people typing and talking and shuffling about.  I managed to liven
things up by getting locked out of the vendors' workroom area.

Each major door on the 3rd floor has a keycard sensor.  The computer
system attached to those sensors keeps track of where you are in the
building.  It will not unlock a door for you if you have not unlocked
all other doors required to get to where you are.  So, if someone
holds a door open for you (quite common), you still must use you
keycard to announce that you're going through that door.

If this happens, you can usually run back to whatever side of whatever
door that you'd forgotten to wave your key at.  However, in my case, I
couldn't do that: none of the doors on 3rd floor (that I'm supposed to
have access to) would recognize my card.  Hitachi Yamada-san had
problems with his key card, too: it took him four attempts before the
system agreed he could re-enter the workroom area.  I had to go back
to the main security office, at ground level, to explain what happened
and to have the system reset.

I left at about 11pm together with Lee-san.  After bidding him goodbye
on the train, I grabbed some takeout sushi and returned to the hotel.
I searched and searched my wallet for my room keycard ... but couldn't
find it anywhere.  Oops.

The hotel manager graciously let me into my room.  Sure enough, the
key card was resting in its spot, next to the door.  The lighting and
heating/cooling systems in the room will not work unless your key card
is in its little holder next to the entrance.  The scheme makes sense:
it conserves energy when you are out.  It's a bit annoying to not have
aaahhhh-blessed-cool-and-dry air immediately upon entering, but the AC
manages to cool things off fairly quickly.

I spent the next hour or so looking into both the train & airline
schedules for getting to & from Sakaiminato.  Rob's new home is a
fishing town of under 40,000 on the west coast of Japan.  It's famous
for its crab (best in Japan) and for the sand dunes along the sea.
(For a map, go to http://www.mapquest.com/, click on the "Maps" icon
 at the top right, enter Japan for the country, then "Sakaiminato" for
 the city name.  You'll probably want to click a "Zoom out" icon to
 the right of map, choosing perhaps the 3rd grey button from the
 bottom.)

Rob suggests flying.  The JR (Japan Rail) schedules that I've seen
suggest about 6.75 hours by train (including 1 Shinkansen "bullet
train" segment!), but Rob's boss thinks that it takes longer than
that.  It would be a heckuvalot of fun to ride a Shinkansen.  And
perhaps fly on the return trip?

Oi, time to get some sleep.

----

I'm not happy with the alarm ringing at 8:15, but I'm not terrible,
either.  I'd managed to sleep pretty well, despite everything.  I've
had grumpier mornings.

A morning email message from my boss, Gary, suggests that it's pretty
important that I meet a mid-September deadline.  If I visit Rob, then
it's realistic that I won't get any real work done until after Labor
Day, Sept 6.  I'm expecting a wicked case of jet lag when I get home,
so that will probably eat at least one day of productivity.  That
doesn't leave enough time to feel comfortable with, especially since
I'll be going on vacation for nearly a week at the end of September.

So, I'll be going home today.

I get dressed and head downstairs (with my keycard) to pick up my
remaining stuff across the street at the cleaners.

    (Game show music starts, lights on the game show stage brighten)

    Announcer: Welcome back to Let's Make a Deal!  Our contestant,
    Scott, has chosen Door #3.  What can you tell us about Door #3?

    Sidekick: Door #3 is the Sailor Cleaning and Laundry door.  Like
    almost every other business doorway in Tokyo, it has a metal
    roll-down door that covers up everything, including the shop
    windows, when the shop is closed.

    Announcer: Are you ready?  Let's see what's behind Door #3!

    Sidekick: Please come back tomorrow.

I *knew* that the Sailor shop was closed on Thursdays.  But it doesn't
*seem* like Thursday today: my work Tuesday at the Shibuya office has
confused me.  Not to mention that it is still Wednesday in America,
right now.

I do not know when I will be returning to Japan.  Mike is pretty
certain that I could return 6 or 9 months later and still pick up my
clothes.  ("This is Japan, after all.  They won't just throw the
clothes out.")  But, at this point, I don't even know *if* I'll be
back.  I don't like the idea of leaving roughly $800 of nearly new
clothes in Tokyo for who-knows-how-long.

So, I'm staying in Tokyo for one more night.  I can work from the
hotel and be relatively productive.  Certainly more productive than
trying to write code in the Data Center environment.  So, the extra
day shouldn't hurt my work schedule too much.  Oi, what a pain.

The husband of a cousin, Rob Luckow, works in the IT department at
Northwest.  I give him a hard time about things like the weak coffee
on the flights.  He throws it back at me saying, "Sure, Scott, I'll
get right on that!  It'll be fixed tomorrow.  In fact, I'll brew it
myself on whatever flight you happen to be on."  I tried to change my
flight reservation this morning but was stymied in all three methods:
via the NWA Web site, via the US reservations telephone center, and
the Tokyo telephone center.  All three said, "We're too busy, please
try again later."  And they said so for nearly an hour, as I watched
my 10am hotel check-out time approach and then pass.

So, it was a small leap of faith to add an extra night to the hotel
without knowing if I'd have a plane seat tomorrow.  Eventually I did
get the change made via the NWA Webadoodle.  But I now have an extra
gripe to give Rob the next time I see him.  :-)